Friday, January 30, 2009

customer service

Does your business use IKON or Pitney Bowes? Stop as soon as possible, but try not to break any leases. I've been wrangling with the closing of many vendor accounts and those two have been incredibly frustrating.

It has taken 11 phone calls (so far) to close our Pitney Bowes account. I'm not really sure where to begin to voice my frustration. Apparently here.

IKON has been no better. While it hasn't taken as many phone calls, it has taken over two months of back and forth to reach a non-vomit-inducing settlement. During my last phone call with them, I was transferred twice just to get back to the main phone system menu where I started. I was transferred two more times until I finally reached a very friendly person who actually wanted to help me. But who were the first four people?

It does sort of make me think what kind of customer service experience people get when they try and call us. Many clients call about W-15s which are a particular type of cement job reports that must be filed with the Railroad Commission of Texas. We always send an original with the invoice we send but people like to lose them or call three years later and say we must not have sent one or whatever. We dig through our records, make another copy, get it signed and send it again. But now that they can't call us, the process has probably become somewhat more frustrating for them. The resourceful ones have figured out how to reach someone who can help them. I'm not really sure what the rest are doing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yep; we've eschewed Pitney Bowes and their ilk for good ol' fashioned stamps and a small scale. No lease, no mail room countertop, no fuss, no muss, no bother. Just a small cache of stamps. Simple is almost always better.